Szegő Dóra - Szegő György: Synagogues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2004)

The Kazinczy utca Synagogue

den by a wire-lattice shell and supported by an iron truss. The vault is broken through by flower-patterned glass tracery windows in the shape of eight-pointed stars reminiscent of apertures decorating the ceilings of theatres. The windows were painted by Miksa Róth.

This being an Orthodox temple, the clear separation of the women's gallery was a prime consideration. Women could only enter the temple from the courtyard. The horse-shoe shaped, two-tier gallery resembles a box in a theatre. The gallery is accessible by way of stairs in the four corners of the building. As shown in archive photographs, curtains were employed on the galleries besides the trac- eried muiharab screens made of turned wood. The theatrical effect is completed by the monumental scenery of the Eastern wall. The gallery's reinforced-con- crete ceiling ribbed from below amplifies the modernist effect.

Around the Ark standing on the mizrah-side pedestal is built the monumental Eastern wall, which indicates a loosening of traditions.

The visual impression is dominated by the warm and pastel colours of the interior furnishings and the ornamental painting. Flanking the Ark on its sides are two slim, green marble columns with gilded capitals. Beside each is a more assertive, red column, with its bronze-ceramic rings alluding to the bronze pillars of Solomon's Temple. Between the two pairs of columns was built the carved reading-desk-cum-throne of the rabbi and the hazzan. Here would be sitting Jákob Reich, the first rabbi of the synagogue, who had the title of royal councillor to Francis Joseph and sat in the Upper House, too. His activities between 1890 and 1930 marked the golden age of the Budapest Orthodox Jewry. Reich’s seat by the Ark was left empty after his death. Above the Ark is a peach-coloured block inlaid with stars of David. Overhead is the symbol, set in a circle, of the Cohanite hands raised in the Priestly Blessing. (According to Orthodox folk tradition, its is through the triangular opening between the two hands that the Almighty looks down upon his people.) The columns support three rows of pyramidal moulding crowned with the tablets of the law. Above the marble structure and the tablets is a semi-circular rosette surrounded by a strip of wall with an aureole.

The Torah-reading rostrum, the bimah, is traditionally set in the geometric centre of the pews and the interior space (subordinated as it is to the monumental Ark in this case), raised above ground floor, traditionally resting on a five-step stand. Among the impressive candelabra on the corners of the stand is the Torah-dressing bench. (The dressing of a virtually-personalised Torah is a spectacular element of the liturgy.)

In a side-wing next to the main entrance is a small prayer-house built twenty years ago by Sándor Bokor—the diminished community could not manage the

66